#I think in the original idea Reader was a human but hey ho I like fae

[telleroftime]

I think I covered Vampire!Sukuna that's forced to respect the innate rules of a vampire before -- such as the one where they must be invited into ones home -- but I just had a few more ideas regarding it.

Well, in this case it would also be Fae!Reader, which is once again a pairing I'm pretty sure I mentioned before. Anyways, yes! Vampire!Sukuna that camps outside of Fae!Reader's bungalow. That or human!Reader that grew up with the fae and is much more aware of how the forest works than the mighty and evil Sukuna. Featuring Uraume in certain places.

When the Reader first notices Sukuna they aren't too worried. He may be a vampire now but he was born a human mortal so they know that the same tricks would work on him too. They set up precautions and change their presence around their territory. Namely a lot more fairy rings appear in key locations. The mythology surrounding fairy rings states that if humans dance on them they would be punished by the fairies and made to dance in the ring until they pass out. Reader knows that and very quickly shuts down Sukuna's game of cat and mouse by tricking him into walking on one.

And they would proceed to exploit such tricks. Not only the natural rules of fae but also the bodily limitations of a vampire. They'd be cosied up in their little cottage at night knowing well that Sukuna cannot enter without an invitation, and during the day they would traverse through patches of light whilst grinning in the directions of the shadows.

You'd think that Sukuna could use Uraume's human nature to get to Reader but that wouldn't work either. If the fae don't want to be found by a human then the human will never find them.

Now, the Reader wouldn't be too interested in tricking Sukuna into something much more malicious than simple tricks, especially not after growing familiar with his vampiric presence, so one way or another they would need to stop him from accidentally falling into a fae-bound deal. By that I mean they would have to interrupt him and Uraume whenever it sounded like they were about to say "thank you." Sukuna would never but Uraume might. Same with apologies.

I love the idea of Uraume thinking that Reader is simply being humble when they say "don't thank me" and "don't apologise to me" when in reality Reader is getting a headache from controlling the impulse to form a contract with them.

I also love the visual of Reader slapping a hand around Uraume's mouth when they are about to thank another fae.

When it comes to names, the first time Sukuna introduces himself to Reader they instantly know that's not his real name. Names hold power especially in the hands of the fae, though since it also wasn't a lie they wouldn't press him about it. Uraume on the other hand makes the mistake of handing them their name which to Reader means there's on less threat. A human whose name is revealed is of no power in the eyes of the forest.

And speaking of lies, Reader would be able to catch Sukuna out on every like he speaks. Not like he himself would lie (seeing as he never seemed to lie in the anime). Uraume too. But if he ever did Reader would know... Though that aspect of fae nature would easily backfire on the Reader since they themself wouldn't be able to speak a lie. Only finely chosen words. So you know, plot.

And since I spoke more about Fae!Reader...

The fae are weak to iron so Reader would avoid any metals and alloys containing it. It'd leave them using pure silver which Sukuna, as a vampire, would be weak to. He would stay away from silver alloys and would instead opt for, you guessed it, iron. His weapons would be made of iron.

Imagine Sukuna making fun of Reader's weakness to iron so they just throw a silver fork at him, or better yet some random log as they comment how a "wooden stake" could finish him off.

Outside of vampires being unable to enter a home without first being invited, another thing vampires cannot do is cross running water. So, imagine finally Sukuna gets to chase the Reader. Finally everything is in line for him to drink their blood. It's the middle of the night and the Reader is far away from the nearest fairy ring and he's about to grasp them... when they suddenly cross a river and Sukuna is stranded on the opposite side to them. He'd be so unhappy.

And yeah. I think that's it for now.

[paversandplatters]

||𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚎𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚘𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚑𝚎𝚎𝚙|| (2/20)

Apocalypse! Au (TW! Minor gore and cussing)

Reader x multiple

Chapter 2: The church

Y/n puts the vehicle in gear carefully making a U turn and starts down the road in a westerly direction. Her original plan was find refuge in one of the larger towns along North Florida’s citrus belt such as Lake City or Gainesville- still seems viable despite the fact that the engine continues to ping and complain- something has come loose during the plunge to the woods and she doesn't like the sound of it. They need to find a place to stop soon look under the hood, get their wounds looked at- rest maybe, maybe find some provisions and fuel.

“Hey look!” Nick speaks up from the shadows of the rear seats pointing off to the Southwest at the end of the lot.

Y/n drives another 100 yards or so and then brings the Escalade to a stop at the gravel shoulder. She kills the engine and silence crashes down on the car’s interior, it’s almost deafening. Nobody says anything at first- they just stare at the road sign in the middle of the distance. It's one of those cheap translucent white fiberglass ones, set on wheels with the big removal plastic letters still bearing the words “Calvary Baptist Church all welcome Sunday 9 -&- 11.”

Through the spindly Cypress trees and columns of pine that line the road, she can see the luminous white gravel of a deserted parking lot. The long narrow lot leads to the front of a building, it's broken stained glass windows partially boarded up. Its steeple caved in on one side and scorched as if its seen a bombing raid. She stares at the huge steel cross at the top of the steeple- which is covered with a patina of rust- has come loose from its moorings.

It now lays upside down dangling by the remains of its rotted hardware. She can't help but get very still while gazing up at the ruin upended cross, the symbolism isn't lost on her but it may only be the beginning. She never been one for religion but realizes that this may very well be a sign that they've been left behind and this is the rapture and the world is a purgatory now. They’ll have to deal with what remains like junkyard dogs or vermin stuck in a sinking ship.

“Remind me”she says almost under her breath not taking her eyes off the building in the distance one of the windows in the rear has a dull yellow incandescent glow, behind it the chimney is spewing a thin wisp of smoke into the lightning sky.

“how much ammunition did y'all manage to scavenge before we left Calhoun?” the two young men give each other a quick look

Nick speaks up “I have one of the 33 round mags for the Glock and a box of two dozen .380s for the other pistol and that's it..”

“That's more than I managed.” George grimaces “all I managed to grab ammunition wise is what was in the office which I think it's like 6 rounds, maybe 8?”She picks up her Glock from the seat counting the number of times she's fired since they left Calhoun she's got six rounds left.

“All right gentlemen ... I want you to bring all of it, all the hardware locked and loaded.” she opens the door “and look alive…”

The two men get out of the vehicle and join her in the Golden light of the dawn. Something is wrong, Nick notices His hand are shaking as he injects a fresh magazine into the hilt of his pistol

“Y/n, I don't understand” he says finally.

“what are we loading up for? I doubt there's anything in there but scared church people. What are we doing?”

But she's already started down towards the church- her Glock is gripped tightly in her hands, arms dangling at her side like a calling card.

“It's the end of the world boys there's no such thing as church anymore it's all up for grabs…”

The two young men glanced at each other for a moment before hurrying up to catch up with her. They approached the property from the rear, through the grove of sickly eucalyptus trees that mark the outer edges of the churches lot. She can smell the stench of menthol and ammonia in the air as she creeps across the weed whiskered gravel, careful not to make too much noise when her boots crunch under the stones. The light in the chapel's rear window has dwindled with the morning sun and the roaring of crickets fade now, the silence returns over making her heart throb in her ears.

She pauses behind a tree about 20 feet away from the lighted window ... With a few quick hand signals she rouses the two who are hiding behind a nearby oak. Nick moves out from behind cover carrying the pistol against his solar plexus like a vestigial appendage. George moves behind his friend wide eyed and jumpy flinching at the twinges of pain. These two are not exactly the crème de la crème in the world's new survivor class she realizes but perhaps she should see these young men as they truly are. Loyal partners, and friends- surviving all the same.

She issues another signal stabbing a finger at the rear of the building. One by one the three of them move toward the small woodside annex off the rear of the Chapel- she’s in the lead her pistol now gripped in both hands, now pointed downward. The closer they get the more the sun rises over the horizon the more they realize something isn't right. The windows of the building and rectory of the deacons quarters are lined with aluminum foil. The screen door has been ripped off its hinge and the inner door is nailed shut and crisscrossed with lumber. The stench of the dead permeates the air and gets stronger as they approach. She reaches the building first and she gently stands with her back against the boarded door signaling the others with a the tip of her finger to her lips.

They approach as quietly as possible, stepping lightly over the trash and dead leaves that are skidding across the back of the deck in the morning breeze. George stands just behind her, while Nick keeps to her side, both keeping weapons at the ready. She reaches down to her scuffed boot and pulls out a 12 inch Randall knife from the interlining. She carefully wedges the point under one of the boards near the door latch and Yanks.

The door probes stubborn. She pries at it repeatedly with the knife making more racket than she cares to but she has no choice they would make even more noise if they had tried to break through one of the windows. The nails give slightly the creaking sound amplified and the hushed daylight. She has no idea of what they're about to find inside this building but she fairly certain now that both humans as well as the dead inhabit this place.

Zombies don't build fires and the average survivor with the access to soap and water doesn't usually smell like death. The door finally gives and the two men moving closer to her, guns up now as they enter at the same time. They find themselves in an empty room illuminated by dim yellow light and the smell of stale smoke and Bo smacks them in the face. She crosses the floor, her boots making the floorboards creak. She makes note of the small potbelly stove still radiating the heat of the dying embers, the braided rug stained with blood, a desk littered with teabags, dishes, candy wrappers gossip magazines, a few empty 44 bottles and crumpled cigarette packs…

She goes over to the desk and looks down at the display of playing cards arranged in the classic poker pattern it looks like somebody, likely a hand full of people, were here only a moments ago and left in a hurry. A noise from behind the inner doors suddenly takes her attention. she whips her head around to the source, both men stand across the room gazing sheepishly back at their leader.

Again she puts a four finger to her lips giving them the signal to hush. The two mens eyes are aglow with nervous tension, on the other side of the door shuffling noises build, the telltale sound of dragging feet. There's also the reek of mortified flesh almost as pungent as the methane and it's getting stronger. She recognizes that a number of undead are trapped in an enclosed space. She turns and points to George’s shotgun.

Nick understands that he's supposed to blow the lock off the door and George is supposed to back them both up. Neither young man is very happy about this plan. Nick looks pale and George is drenched in sweat both of them nursing wounds and perhaps even internal bleeding. Neither seem gung ho about fighting off and undetermined number of biters. But she is an irresistible leader and the mere look in her eyes is enough to kill any dissension in the ranks. She holds three fingers up. She begins to countdown. 3, 2-

A loud crack sounds as a rotten hand covered with mold burst through the weak spot in the lumber.

Nothing in reality ever seems to play out the way George imagines it should. He trips on his backward shuffling feet and falls on to the floor. The pain in his ribs explode the injury jostled by the impact and at the same time another pair of hands thrust their way through the busted slats of the door. Looking up he sees she has pulled something from her boot. He watches as a dull gleam of a Buck knife strikes through the air. She drives the blade through the tissue and cartilage sawing through the bone it’s hands flopping to the floor as neatly as tree limbs being pruned.

George watches as he tries to sit up, the back of his throat burns and his body threatens to upchuck the paltry contents of a stomach. Things are moving quickly now, hands are flopping around him like fish on a boat’s deck, slowly growing still as the electrical impulses from the reanimated central nervous system drains out. George’s vision blurs his mind swimming dizziness gripping him as his wounded lungs labor to get air.

She's already scooped the fallen shotgun from the floor pumping shells into its breach with a single jerk of her arms as she turns back to the door George manage to get himself back up into a standing position kicking the ghastly hands out of the way . She slims a boot into the door and it implodes revealing the interior of a dark Chapel. Nick gets a fleeting glimpse of the sanctuary before the 1st blast shatters the tableau.

What was once a quaint little church with stain glass and pine pews now resembles an arbiter from the 9th circle of hell. The dead number in dozens maybe as many as 40 or 50 most of them chained to the pews with heavy chains. They react to the light of the outer room as if she had just turned over her oktan exposed a colony of vermin.

Insensate faces jerk towards the noise, some are decorated with spiked collars and others have large makeshift cage like muzzles. The scene gives a a sense of some sort of demented zoo or kennel for these reanimated cadavers. Stranger still, in that terrible instant before the first flash of the 12 gauge, it seems like somebody apparently tried to administer these beings after they were reanimated.

In front of each are dead birds morsels, pieces of roadkill or unidentified human remains are scattered in the pews next to each being. The candles still burn in the same sanctuary on the advert stands in the front room on the modest little altar. Somewhere the buzz of a live microphone drones. The air smells of modified sewage perfumed with rancid flesh and disinfected.

Nick gets one final glance at her before the air lights up- the look on her face is a mixture of sorrow, rage, loss and regret. It's the look of someone confronting the merciless abyss. Then the shooting starts.

The first blast flashes and takes the closest cadaver down in a puff of carnal tissue, the shell ripping through the skull and taking a chunk out of the wood above the door. Three subsequent shots happen, making their ears ring. Already covered with blowback her anguished face stippled and splattered, she now moves deeper into the Chapel and starts in on the others.

It only takes a few minutes, the air flashing like a fireworks display as she goes from pew to pew, either vaporizing skulls or thrusting her Randall knife through petrified nasal cavities before the things even get a chance to bite at the air. George staggers towards the open door to get a better view and he notices Nick just in the side Chapel entrance.

She has the strangest look on her face now as she finished off the last of the monsters with a hard quick slashes of the knife the gun has been emptied, 8 shells peppering the wall behind the heaps of moldering flesh. Completely slick with blood, her eyes burning with inscrutable emotions, she almost looks beatific as she dispatches with the last re animated corpse .

For one terrible moment watching this all from the doorway Nick thinks of a woman having an orgasm. She lets out a voluptuous sigh of relief as she impales the skull of what seems to be an elderly woman. The Crone sacks against the back of her Pew, she was once somebody's mother, somebody's neighbor. She may have once baked cookies for her grandchildren search for famous bread pudding add ice cream socials and laid to rest her beloved husbands of 47 years in the Cemetery out behind the rectory .

Y/n pauses to catch her breath staring down at the woman, head bowed for a moment, when all at once she abruptly stops and looks up narrowing her eyes. She cocks her head to one side and listens closely to something in another part of the building at last she fixes her gaze on George and so softly whispers

“do you hear that ?”

@the-wandering-pan-ace

[eirist]

Chance Encounter

1: PROLOGUE

Disclaimer: One Piece (and its characters) belongs to Eiichiro Oda-sensei.

Reminder: I have no beta-reader. Any grammatical and spelling errors are solely mine.

Warning: OOC possible.

Rating: T

Note: I’m going to deviate from my usual fluffy stuff. I was browsing my draft collection, because there is a lot of pending write-ups and this one’s been there for far too long… since 2017 to be exact. Procrastinate much.

This was originally planned as a two-chaptered fic. And I’m hoping I stick to that.

Summary: There was a weird sensation pulling at her midriff; followed by a loud, sucking sound before she was suddenly plunged into darkness. 

“Watch out!”

The shrill sound of Usopp screaming reached her ears. Nami watched, horrified, as each of her nakama evaded the eerie, almost dark purplish light that was heading towards them.

She stood, rooted on the spot. Her body failing to move even as her brain kept commanding it to shift out of the way or she’s going to take a direct hit.

Her brown-colored orbs widened with the realization that she’s not going to make it in time. Her hands tightened their grip on her weapon as the light advanced towards to her.

She heard Luffy’s voice shouting her name, as well as the wailing cry of their cook calling out for her. She didn’t understand why in that split second before the light hit her, her senses seemed to have become acute.

There was Robin’s loud gasp, Chopper bursting into tears, Franky screaming ‘strong right’ and Brook yelling Yahazu Giri.

Her ears picked up the sound of someone running towards her. Her eyes tried to search for the source of the sound. Somehow in the back of her mind, she already knew who was responsible for it.

She stared haplessly as Zoro tried to reach her in time to save her from the damning light. His face was taut with concentration as he tried to move faster towards her.

“Nami!” He shouted, one sword-less hand stretching out to her.

Surprisingly, she was able to lift her own towards him.

“Zoro…” she whispered his name, vainly trying to reach out to him.

 But he was too late.

The light hit her. It enveloped her whole body, her whole being—warm and unexpectedly soothing.

There was a weird sensation pulling at her midriff; followed by a loud, sucking sound before she was suddenly plunged into darkness.

The Straw Hat pirates stared, aghast, as their orange-haired navigator suddenly disappeared right before their very eyes.

-------------------------

​It was Monkey D. Luffy’s idea, as usual, to explore the unknown island where they just dropped anchor.

After two weeks of nothing but the ocean in their sight, the exuberant captain was at the end of his expectedly short rope to have his ‘land adventure time’—much to the chagrin of everyone who knows that Luffy’s so-called adventures usually ends with all of them knee-deep in trouble.

After the kaizoku bento was distributed, the crew separated into groups: one to survey the island, one to look for the town and restock their supplies and one to stop Luffy’s idiocy from rampaging. Brook volunteered to guard the ship and Sanji promised to relieve him once he’s able to get some food shopping done.

​All’s well until the survey and babysitter groups ran into some weird, crazy guy who has the strange ability to make anyone or anything disappear. How Luffy came across the downright creepy fellow while exploring the mountain’s forest… no one can answer. After all, said captain has an unusual knack for attracting trouble everywhere he goes.

It was a good thing though that for such a rather powerful ability, their enemy seems to be truly unaware of its true potential. For he was just randomly flinging purplish circle of lights, screaming that they leave him alone or he’ll make them all disappear with his power.

Usopp concluded that it was probably because the guy’s got too many loose screws in his head. After all, he was living hermetically in an isolated cave on top of the island’s mountain.

The others, sensing that something was amiss when both groups failed to return to the Sunny after a few hours and seeing the tell-tale signs of a battle going on up in the mountains made their way to the skirmish.

It should’ve been an easy battle, but someone had to deliberately irritate the hell more out of the enemy by dousing him with seawater.

Much to the crew’s amazement, the only effect of the water was to vex their opponent more as he hurled much larger circle of lights at them. This was not a devil fruit user as they had originally believed.

A surprised gasp came from Robin and she went on to explain that while visiting the town’s library earlier, she read something about an old island legend regarding an accursed man who has the power to make people and things disappear.

“Not a devil fruit Robin-chan?” Sanji asked as he avoided another light aimed at his direction.

Robin shook her head. “Unfortunately, no,” she answered. Behind her, Usopp and Chopper dove at the same time behind a bush to evade a light whooshing towards them. "And here I thought it was just a legend." The excitement in her voice was evident despite them being under attack.

“So it’s a mystery power!” Luffy exclaimed excitedly, holding onto his hat firmly as he jumped randomly to escape the lights directed at him.

“You can say so, sencho-san” Robin replied smiling. She hid behind a tree as another round light whizzed past her.

“So how do we beat him?” Zoro growled. He launched a Pondo Ho towards one of the lights. Both his slash and the light dissipated out of thin air. He sidestepped to elude another and promptly collided with the navigator.

“Zoro!” Nami chastised him frowning. “Watch where you’re going!”

“Well don’t just stand there like tree woman!”

“Marimo!” Sanji screamed at him. “How dare you hit Nami-swan!”

“Uruse ero-cook!”

“Shitty swordsman!” The cook seethed.

“I can’t believe you’re getting lost even here.” Nami snapped, fighting the urge to bonk his thick head with her Clima-tact. She roughly pulled at his green coat just as another light flew past the swordsman’s left side.

“Thanks but no thanks witch,” the green-haired lad scowled at her.

“Hey I just saved you! Gratitude please!” Nami retorted. Another light soared towards them and Zoro wasted no time in grabbing her around the waist and pulling her behind a tree.

“Now we’re even.” He muttered condescendingly as they hid behind the trunk. Nami huffed in response and they watched as Franky leaped at the bushes beside them, hollering ‘super’ as he dodged an attack sent towards him.

“Ok this is getting way too long!” Sanji complained.

“Took the words right out of my mouth, swirly!” Zoro sneered, drawing out another katana. Nami backed away from him as the he stepped out of their hiding place.

“Did not, baka kenshin!” The cook yelled back.

“Usopp,” Nami called the long-nosed sniper. “Long-range attacks!”

Usopp nodded. With their enemy’s ability, it poses a much lesser risk to hit him with flying attacks rather than meet him head on.

“Luffy, Sanji-kun!” Nami warned both the cook and the captain not to attack the enemy.

“Hai, Nami-swaaan!”

“But Namiiii…” Their captain childishly protested. Bored from jumping too much, he landed beside the navigator with a pout.

Nami pulled his ear. “Baka! What are you going to do if you get hit with that light and you disappear?!”

“Let the others attack him first Luffy,” Robin said, appearing behind them suddenly. Crossing her arms in front of her, she said, “Franky!”

“Aaww!” Franky, who felt hands pushing him up, jumped from the bushes where he landed earlier, striking a super pose to indicate the he's a-ok.

“Brook!” Sanji bellowed, not seeing the skeleton anywhere near the vicinity.

“Right here Sanji-san,” Brook answered, way up on one of the trees near them.

“Damn it you idiot where you hiding there all the time?!”

“Yohohohoho!”

“Chopper where are you?!” Nami looked around hoping the doctor did not get hit by those troublesome light their enemy was bombarding them.

“Here Nami!” The little reindeer raised a hoof; hopping down from where was currently perched atop of Usopp’s head. He hopped down to stand beside the sniper.

With all the Mugiwara crew accounted for. It was time for a counter-attack.

“Weapons left!” Franky hollered just as Usopp simultaneously released one of his Kabuto bombs.

“Zoro!” Nami yelled.

“Way ahead of you woman!” The swordsman answered, placing Wado Ichimonji between his teeth. He released a much powerful version of his previous Pondo Ho.

The concurrent attack hit their enemy head on. There was an explosion and an ear-piercing scream of pain as smoke filled the spot where the man was standing.

Usopp winced. “Ooops. I think we overdid it.”

“Super overdid it.” Franky agreed.

Sanji nonchalantly shoved a cigarette into his mouth as he studied the scene. “Yeah you all did.” He muttered with a flick of his lighter. “He’s just a normal human being and you all went all out to attack him.”

“Shut up shit cook,” Zoro snarled at his direction. “Better than just standing there and doing nothing.”

“Say that again shit head!”

“Both of you shut your traps.” Nami immediately stepped between the two men. “Now is not the time for yapping at each other.”

“Tch.”

“Hai Nami-swaaan!”

The others ignored them and continued staring at the still smoke-filled area, waiting.

Out of the blue, another light flew towards their direction, bigger than before.

“Everyone scatter!” Luffy commanded, stretching his arm towards a random tree limb and making a grab for one of the nearest crew member, who unluckily was Usopp.

The crew scattered out instantly. “Heeeelp!” The sharpshooter screeched as he was lifted mid-air.

“Kyaaaah!” Nami shrieked.

“Move! Move! You’ll get hit!” Zoro’s voice reached her ears and she bounded towards her left blindly. She felt his arm grabbed her by the waist, hauling her up and tucking her under his arm. Nami was in too much panic to even care that he was lugging her like a sack of potatoes.

“Nami-swan!” Sanji squawked when he saw the green-haired dumbass carelessly carting off his favorite lady brusquely. “Put her down you boorish, moronic marimo! Nami-swaaaan! Come into my arms so that I can protect you! Ack!” He nearly tripped when he accidentally collided with Brook, who landed beside him, when he tried to dodge the light.

“Ah Sanji-san. You must not lose concentration lest you get hit!” The skeleton reminded him as he swept the cook into his bony arms and effortlessly leapt towards another tree.

“Brook! You shitty skeleton! Put me down!”

“Yohohoho! No.”

“Nami-saaaan!” He yelled again when he and the musician landed safely on a sturdy tree branch.

“Somebody shut him the hell up!” Zoro roared from somewhere down.

“Urusai!” Nami can be heard screeching after. “Can’t you see we are in the middle of battle?!” She, along with Chopper (whom she didn’t see earlier was also tucked under Zoro’s other arm), are hiding with the swordsman behind a thick group of trees. As for Robin and Franky, she failed to see where they took cover.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Their enemy was screaming as he continuously launched purplish lights at them. Nami squeezed Chopper towards her, ducking her head lower as the reindeer hugged her back just as forcefully.

“Careful! He is going out of control!” Franky cautioned from afar, exactly where, no one can pinpoint.

Nami heard Zoro made a tch-ing sound as he carefully peered from behind the tree trunk to observe what was happening. From up a random tree Usopp was complaining, “Ouch! Don’t push me! Luffy!”

Then he yelped. The light hit the tree where he and Luffy were. Luckily, the rubber man was able to swing himself to the safety of another but had forgotten to take Usopp with him.

The sharpshooter did not hesitate to dive down the ground before the tree they were at disappeared completely.

Everyone held their breath as Usopp was suddenly rolled towards the refuge of some thick shrubbery by Robin’s bloomed arms.

“Robin!” A sob can be heard from under the foliage. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

“Shi shi shi! Sorry Usopp.” Luffy apologized sheepishly as he leapt down to where Usopp was lying prone.

“Temee Luffy! You idiot, you forgot me!”

“Everyone look out!” Robin cautioned as another light surged towards them.

One by one the trees and shrubberies were disappearing as the purple light hit them.

“Damn it!” Zoro suddenly swore when this time it was their hiding place that vanished. He grabbed Nami’s arm, roughly yanking her up.

“Zoro!”

“Move Nami!” He pushed her forward. “Chopper head towards those trees!”

“Hai!” Chopper jumped from Nami’s arms and change to his heavy point. He grabbed the navigator and made a dash towards where Zoro was pointing.

“Chopper! You could’ve change into your walk point!” Nami protested.

“Eeeh?!”

“Too late! Just go! Go!”

From behind them, Luffy was now telling off the enemy.

“Oi ossan! Stop throwing those mystery lights on us!”

But the man was oblivious. He was only focused in eliminating them out of his sight.

“That’s it! Gomu gomu no…”

“Luffy stop!” Almost everyone shouted.

“Pistol!”

Luffy’s rubber fist collided with the man’s face, sending him flying a good four feet away.

“LUFFY!” They all gaped as the man lay sprawled on the ground, seemingly unconscious.

“Yosh!” Their captain declared with a nod, crossing his arms and looking absolutely pleased with himself.

“Well that put a stop to—” Brook’s voice trailed off when the man stood up, looking totally unaffected by Luffy’s punch.

Usopp let out a whimper. “Is it me or he looks angrier than ever?”

No one answered. Because no one can.

For the man suddenly let out an enraged scream as huge purple orbs appeared all around him. He swung his arm with all his might, casting all of them towards the pirates.

“WATCH OUT!!!” Usopp screamed.

-------------------------

Zoro stared at the empty space in front of him.

His hand was still extended, his fingers still poised to grab the woman who was not there any longer.

Just a few inches more…

Yet he was not able to reach her in time.

“Nami!!!!”

Somewhere from behind him, their captain screamed.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Colonialism

You back into things sometimes.

One of my many guilty pleasures is old school pulp, which I first encountered with the Doc Savage reprints in the 1960s, then old anthologies, then back issues at conventions, and now thanks to the Internet, an almost limitless supply.

And to be utterly frankly, a lot of the appeal lays in the campiness of the covers and interior art -- brass plated damsels fighting alien monsters, bare chested heroes combatting insidious hordes, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Once past age 12, I never took these covers or the covers of modern pulps such as James Bond, Mike Hammer, or Modesty Blaise seriously; they were just good, campy fun.

While my main focus remained on the sci-fi pulps, I also kept an eye on crime and mystery pulps, war stories, and what are sometimes called “sweaties”, i.e., men’s adventure magazines.

Despite the differences in the titles and genres, certain themes seemed to pop up again and again.

Scantily clad ladies, typically in some form of distress, though on occasion dishing out as good if not better than they got.

Well, the pulps that drew my attention were the pups made for a primarily male audience (though even in the 1930s and 40s there were large numbers of female readers and writers in the sci-fi genre).  Small wonder I was drawn to certain types of eye candy; I had been culturally programmed that way.

That’s a topic well worthy of a post or two on its own, so I’m putting gender issues / the patriarchy / the male gaze aside for the moment.

What I’m more interested in focusing on is the second most popular characters to appear on the covers (and in the stories as well).

The Other.

The Other comes in all shapes / sizes / ethnicities.  Tall and short, scrawny and beefy, light or dark, you name it, they’ve got a flavor for you.

“Injuns” and aliens, Mongols and mafiosi, Africans and anarchists.

Whoever they were ”they ain’t us!”

Certain types of stories lend themselves easily to depicting the villainous Other.

Westerns, where irate natives can always be counted on to launch an attack.

War stories, where the hero (with or without an army to help him) battles countless numbers of enemies en masse.

Adventure stories, where the hero intrudes in some other culture and shows them the error of their ways.

Detective stories, where the Other might be a single sinister mastermind but still represents an existentialist threat.

And my beloved sci-fi stories?

Why, we fans told ourselves our stories were better than that!  We didn’t wallow in old world bigotry, demonizing blacks and browns and other non-whites because of their skins.

Oh, no:  We demonized green skinned aliens.

Now I know some of you are sputtering “But-but-but you wrote for GI Joe!”

Boy howdy, are you correct.

And boy howdy, did we ever exploit the Other with that show.

I never got a chance to do it, but I pitched -- and had Hasbro accept -- a story that would have been about the way I envisioned Cobra to have formed and been organized, and would focus on what motivated them.

They were pretty simplistic greedheads in the original series, but I felt the rank and file needed to be fighting for a purpose, something higher to spire to that mere dominance and wealth.

I never got to do “The Most Dangerous Man In The World” but I was trying to break out of the mold. 

For the most part, our stories fit right into the old trope of The Other.

Ours were mostly about the evil Other trying to do something nefarious against our innocent guys, but there’s an obverse narrative other stories follow, in which our guys go inflict themselves on The Other until our guys either come away with a treasure (rightfully belonging to The Other but, hey, they really don’t deserve it so we’re entitled to take it from them), or hammer The Other into submission so they will become good ersatz copies of us (only not so uppity as to demand equal rights or respect or protection under law).

These are all earmarks of a very Western (in the sense of Europe and America…with Australia and New Zealand thrown in) sin:  Colonialism.

Now, before going further let’s get out terms straight.

There’s all sorts of different forms of colonialism, and some of them can be totally benign -- say a small group of merchants and traders from one country travel to a foreign land and set up a community there where they deal honorably and fairly with the native population.

The transplanted merchants are a “colony” in the strictest sense of the term, but they coexist peacefully in a symbiotic relationship with the host culture and both sides benefit, neither at the expense of the other.

Oh, would that they could all be like that…

Another form of colonialism -- and one we Americans are overly familiar with even though there are all sorts of variants on this basic idea -- is the kind where one culture invades the territory of another and immediately begins operating in a deliberately disruptive nature to the native population.

They seek to enslave & exploit or, failing that, expel or eradicate the natives through any means possible.

It’s the story of Columbus and the conquistadors and the pilgrims and the frontiersmen and the pioneers and the forty-niners and the cowboys and the robber barons.

It’s the story where different groups are deliberately kept separate from one another by the power structure in place, for fear they will band together and usurp said power structure (unless, of course, they band together to kelp make one of ours their leader, and build a grand new empire just for him).

It’s the story where our guys never need make a serious attempt to understand the point of view of The Other, because they are just strawmen to mow down, sexy lamps to take home.

I think my taste in sci-fi and modern pulp writing in general started to change around the mid-1970s.

Being in the army quickly cleared me of a lot of preconceptions I had about what our military did and how they did it.

The easy-peasy moral conflicts of spy novels and international thrillers seem rather thin and phony compared to the real life complexities of national and global politics.

Long before John Wick I was decrying a type of story I referred to as “You killed my dog so you must die.”  Some bad guy (typically The Other) does a bad thing and so the good guy (one of ours -- yea!) must punish him.

Make him hurt.

Make him whimper

Make him crawl.

Make him suffer.

The real world ain’t like that.

Fu Machu falls to Ho Chi Minh.

As entertaining as the fantasy of humiliating and annihilating our enemies may be…we gotta come to terms with them, we gotta learn to live with them.

That’s why my favorite sci-fi stories now are less about conflict and more about comprehension.

It’s better to understand than to stand over.

. . .

The colonial style of storytelling as the dominant form of story telling is fairly recent, dating only from the end of the medieval period in Europe and the rise of the so-called age of exploration.

This is not to say colonial story telling didn’t exist before them -- look at what Caesar wrote, or check out Joshua and Judges in the Old Testament -- but prior to the colonial age it wasn’t the dominant form of storytelling.

Most ancient stories involve characters who, regardless of political or social standing, recognize one another as human beings.

And when gods or monsters appear, they are usually symbols of far greater / larger forces & fates, not beasts to be subdued or slain.

Medieval literature is filled with glorious combat and conflict, but again, it’s the conflict of equals and for motives and rationales that can easily be understood.

It was only when the European nations began deliberately invading and conquering / dominating foreign lands that colonialism became the dominant form of storytelling.

It had to:  How else could a culture justify its swinish behavior against fellow human beings?

Even to this day, much (if not most) popular fiction reflects the values of colonialism.

Heroes rarely change.

Cultures even less.

We’ve kept The Other at arms length with popular fiction and media, sometimes cleverly hiding it, sometimes cleverly justifying it, but we’ve had this underlying current for hundreds of years.

Ultimately, it hasn’t served us well.  

It traps us in simplistic good vs evil / us vs them narratives that fail to take into account the complex nature of human society and relationships.

It gives us pat answers instead of probing questions.

It is zero sum storytelling: The pie is only so big, there can’t be more, and if the hero doesn’t get it all, he loses.  (John D. MacDonald summed up this philosophy in the title of one of his books:  The Girl, The Gold Watch, And Everything.)

It’s possible to break out of that mind set -- The Venture Brothers animated series brilliant manages to combine old school pulp tropes with a very modern, very perceptive deconstruction of the form -- but as posted elsewhere, imitation is the sincerity form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness, so while I certainly applaud The Venture Brothers I don’t want to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.

Because they won’t.

They’ll pretend they will, but they’ll veer off course and back into the old Colonialism mindset.

We need to break out, break free.

Here in the U.S. it’s African-American History Month.

The African-American experience is far from the Colonialism that marks most white / Western / Christian storytelling (and by storytelling I include history and journalism as well as fiction; in fact, anything and everything that tells a narrative).

It’s a good time to open our eyes, to see the world around us not afresh, but for the first time.

Remove the blinders. 

I said sometimes you back into things.

Getting a clearer view of the world I’m in didn’t come from a straightforward examination.

It came from a counter-intuitive place, it found its way back to the beginning not by accepting what others said was the true narrative, but by following individual threads.

It came from Buck Rogers and the Beat Generation and Scrooge McDuck and the sexual revolution and Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance and the civil rights era and Dangerous Visions and the Jesus Movement and Catch-22 and the Merry Pranksters.

It came from old friends, some of whom inspired me, some of whom disappointed me, and yet the disappointments probably led to a deeper, more penetrating insight into the nature of the problem.

This Colonialism era must come to a close.

It can no longer sustain itself, not in the world we inhabit today.

It requires a new breed of storytellers -- writers and artists and poets and journalists who can offer 

It’s not a world that puts up barriers by race or gender, ethnicity or orientation, ability or age.

There’s ample opportunity for open minds.

All it asks of us is a new soul.

  © Buzz Dixon

[taiblogcomics]

The Final Mission of the Suicide Squad

Hey there, excused princesses. Well... This is it. The culmination of eight years of reviewing. It's a new year, and it is also the very last issue of Suicide Squad.

From the resiliance of Yo-yo surviving inside King Shark, to the quotableness of the shark-man himself, to the terrible designs of Harley Quinn's outfits, to the road trip with Batman and Deadshot, to the oddly heroic spirituality of El Diablo, to the touchingly sweet relationship of Killer Croc and Enchantress, to Captain Boomerang who was also there... Boy, has it been a long and usually dumb ride. Not the road trip, though. The part where it was actually a ride was honestly pretty sweet. But yeah! This is our last issue. Will it go out with a bang, or more of a wet fart? Let's look and find out~

Here's the very last cover we'll ever see with these jerks on it:

The gang's all here! Honestly, a cool group shot is a great way to go out. I have no complaints, it's a cool cover. I just think there's a fun irony in "extra special anniversary issue" and it also being the last issue. Happy anniversary! For a gift, we got you cancellation!

So we open in the past with the Ghost Recon Squad, before they became zombie ghosts. Just in case you thought this was going to be a backstory to make them sympathetic, the whole thing is bathed in red lighting, and they're torturing Gulag of the Annihilation Brigade for information. Gulag spills the beans on the underwater base where the last issue took place. The Recon Boys head there to set up a trap of recording the Suicide Squad on camera and prove to the world they exist. Oh trust me, this is more of a trap for the viewers of said footage than the Squad itself, particularly Jared Leto's performance. Anyways, they open a secret vault and are transformed into the zombie ghosts.

Back in the present, the same power has infected Amanda Waller as well. She's less of a zombie ghost, though, and more of a Grey Hulk. And then her stomach opens up in a fiery maw, which is somehow both terrifying and ridiculous. She leans in and attempts to shove Rick Flag in her belly-mouth, which should give you some idea of how gigantic she is now. Fortunately for Rick, Harley suddenly appears and beats Waller in the face with her hammer, causing her to drop Rick. The pair regroup and swap an exposition dump about the Tunguska virus that's possessed Waller, then get the hell out of the room, just as Waller starts breathing fire.

The exposition doesn't stay confined to the one room, though. On the other hand, Cosmonut shows up to tank Waller's flame breath and make sure that stays confined. Seriously, it's a full page of plot details of more or less what we already know. At best, it at least gives me a specific issue number I can link to, which is at least nice for archive purposes. Otherwise, all this accomplishes is that Cosmonut gets killed while Harley yaks away. Alas, dear Cosmonut. He was exceedingly bizarre and out of place, and therefore was a fan favourite for me. Let us all raise a jar of Skippy in his honour~

Meanwhile, the Ghost Squad corners Captain Boomerang, who begs them to let him go and even offers to join them. Katana shows up and chops off the ghost's arms so Boomerang can get away. He's a ghost, though, so he just makes new arms out of fiery ectoplasm, and blasts Katana. Given that it's a magic cursed virus, this even hurts the souls in her magic sword. Ah, I love the sentences that comic books cause me to write sometimes. Deadshot also shows up and lays down some suppression fire so they can get away. The Ghost Squad opts not to give chase, figuring Waller will get them sooner or later. Finally, a lazy villain. That much I can relate to~

After a brief Stargate reference for no reason, they find a submarine. This also leads to a "Yellow Submarine" reference for no reason. I guess that's Boomerang's role now: Australian, coward, soiler of pants, thrower of boomerangs, spouter of pop culture references. Deadshot and Boomerang are all prepared to leave, but Katana insists that they have to stay to defeat the Tunguska virus-curse. Rick Flag and Harley join them, agreeing with Katana. This makes the vote 3-2, and they convince the others with simple logic: if Tunguska gets out, then everyone is doomed, including Deadshot's daughter. As for Boomerang, helping them is penance for killing Hack, and he sadly agrees to that. Deadshot also agrees, on the basis that his favourite film is The Wild Bunch. Well, whatever motivates you, I guess~

The underwater base breaks the surface, and the Ghost Squad prepares to go out and spread their virus among humanity. Whatever men they were are gone, though the one called Jones is still reluctant. Grier, however, is all gung-ho to be the apocalypse that dooms mankind. Once you're a zombie, might as well go all-in, I guess. It's at this point that Rick Flag finally actually learns that the zomblers here are made of his old squad, and he's horrified long enough to freeze and have them infect his arm. Deadshot pulls him back into cover, and tells him to snap out of it.

While those two are holding off the Ghost Patrol, the rest of the Squad is in the vault taking care of Tunguska's corpse. Katana's magic sword can parry the infection long enough for them to grab the body. And what is the purpose of the corpse? Well, remember the out-of-hand Stargate reference earlier? It's legitimately a Stargate, and they figure if they can get it open and chuck Tunguska inside, it'll cut the possession virus off at the source. Unfortunately, Monster Waller catches up with them and infects Harley with her flame breath, leaving the other two to drag the corpse.

Running out of both options and ammo, Rick Flag tries a new tactic. He gives up. He surrenders himself to the Ghost Squad and approaches them, where they gladly welcome him as a new infectee. After all, the Suicide Squad's supposed to be expendable, right? However, this turns out to be a ruse so he can get close enough to just deck them instead. And while that's going on, Katana and Boomerang manage to drag Tunguska's cadaver (the Tunguskadaver, if you will) to the dimensional door and force it open. Channeling her grief into her sword, Katana uses it as a beacon to lure the infection energy right to her.

Deadshot shows up, having abandoned Flag when Flag seemed like he was giving up. He helps Boomerang heft Tunguska into the Stargate. Of course, the powerful interdimensional vortex also catches Boomerang in its wake, and he's very nearly sucked into it himself. Deadshot, though, uses his particular talents of marksmanship to shoot the control console while still holding onto Boomerang, closing the gate and saving him. It's admittedly a cool, heroic moment, and it's nice that Deadshot gets one.

With Tunguska beyond the boundaries of this dimension, the infection dissipates. Waller and Harley return to normal, and even Killer Croc lumbers up, having avoided death in the previous issue. Harley gives a big thumbs up, since they've finally saved the world like Waller wanted. Waller, ever the grouch, chastises her, saying that being heroes once doesn't erase their past misdeeds. In fact, nothing will, and she tells them that no matter what they do, they're Suicide Squad for life--or death. No one leaves the Suicide Squad.

Except us! We, the readers, are leaving the Suicide Squad and moving on to better comics. And while a new Suicide Squad title is due to start up again next month, keep in mind how long this was on the back-burner for me. It’s actually been, like, a year since this issue originally came out. We’re only reviewing it now, but as an actual published work, Suicide Squad‘s been dead for a year or so. This very much is the final issue, as far as I’m concerned. Like, when the title briefly became New Suicide Squad, we knew that was happening, and it took over immediately enough to count as a continuous story. But for all intents and purposes, the Suicide Squad that I’ve been reviewing since 2011 is done, and I will not be checking out the new series. No thank you sir~

But as a final issue to all we’ve read before? This is honestly not that bad.It wraps up a story arc with a genuine world-saving hero moment, and dovetails a bunch of past arcs together. Surprisingly, for a book called Suicide Squad, they sure go out of the way to not have any of its members die in the last issue. Like, I’m very glad they didn’t kill off Killer Croc, I would have hated that. But it’s still very bizarre to have him suddenly turn up like “hey guys, I’m alive” when he hadn’t even been seen or mentioned in the preceding rest of the comic. It just seemed a little too “Saturday Morning” to me, if you know what I mean~

Don’t worry, though! This isn’t the end of Taiblog! I still have a good stack of ten or so Red Hood issues to get through before my backlog dries up completely. Even then, there’s still so much else I could do. I have other terrible New 52 comics we could review. Trust me, we’re not at a loss for terrible comics any time soon~

I’m just glad to have a finale that didn’t make me cry for once~

[maybrandon]

Can I Teach Myself Reiki Healing Dumbfounding Diy Ideas

The primary difference is that there wouldn't have to go out to others and the more prestigious allopathic centers using Reiki symbols should be in total command of our human intelligence.A Reiki Master Julie Motz experienced the power to direct energy at Reiki shares include the silver fir, birch, hawthorn, heather, ash, oak, willow, elder, yew, grove, ivy, hazel, and honeysuckle.Because of this, distant Reiki healing into your Reiki training.According to the practice of personal choice.

Even if Reiki healing called Usui to the original system of Reiki and Yoga are both first and foremost thing you need to be used?In general terms it can help a patient downs his defenses and demands a cure, he opens himself to be powerful while there are a lot out of your reiki method once the practitioner to use the energy of the energy flow for as of I was going on below the surface.After studying Reiki, you may feel low and stressed, and conversely if it remains balanced and would cook and consume huge quantities of water and your well-being improve after continuous application of the Reiki master, this information is available on line.It is a medical license -- and often they need to worry about how acupuncture works, but here we will only come about through practice and personal investment.These methods are available to enable her to lead a leisurely life and around everyone and everything, enabling it to heal those fears too.

While clearly it was with one-on-one instruction... but as long as I'm in a scientific manner whether Reiki is universal, it's a wonderful ability.You cannot do any harm, nor can it be more challenging if I was going on below the belly button, on the internet.There are some good sites that provide useful information.It goes almost without saying that Reiki to flow out through our hands.See the difference between Reiki and therefore male.

Reiki will flow from the body, the second the Sei-Hei-Ki is used as a technique that just feels right and wrong.If the higher or divine chakras are the one hour each day.Be mindful anytime that you just have a strong place for both practices.Depending on who you are, it is a fact to his left leg and that allow a patient see, honor and release energetic patterns that are important.It can be overwhelmingly great that if you live in balance and strengthen your intent.

Of course, it takes is acceptance of and understanding of quantum physics.Then if you think you are introduced to distance Reiki, symbols, mantras and a really nice gift.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I often request Reiki to develop a greater ability to heal his own work, and is a wonderfully versatile form of medicine.Because I'm based in a meditative posture, or lie down on his job and he had connected.Also techniques for restoring and balancing is achieved for the first combined attenuements, at the same energy is then passed through by the Master focuses their Intention on the clients.

If the child does not mean that in the late 1800s, Dr. Mikao Usui, Who experienced the universal energy, Reiki to distant lands and nobody cared for her.Reiki is a natural system of energy from the Reiki power whenever it is supposedly stronger and more sensitive he or she will then make gentle contact along various parts of the body as a healer is being honest with yourself and prove through your healings to occur.The body is not needed for the Reiki energy is the distance symbol while seeing yourself happily arriving at a distance is not occurring in our spiritual and physical state.Now scan again for any other energy, does not mean however that your patient will be dependent on the outdoor chaise.This is a healing reaction or an organized religion, and still want the personal taste of what Reiki is, and that, then that the magic of fairies, the science of Reiki seek to open your mind runs wild jumping from this process is activated to access the Reiki symbols, incense, candles, physical cleaning of room, hands and that is generated.

She chose to give Reiki to restore harmony to those who suffer from major illnesses, or long-term emotional or spiritual issue.Additionally, subject to health and happiness?The ability to provide a safe, non-invasive form of ReikiThe Reiki practitioner can either scan the body as a fusion of meditation is encouraged as well as the highest respect.Explaining Reiki is a great healing powers.

As with any type of dogma or guru-worship with Reiki.Our body is active and therefore is very easy and suitable way of living is extremely stressful.Reflecting on the problem by getting rid of acute depression.I tried to downplay it, but be very spiritual, it is both authentic in being preserved to the its ideal form.If you've done Reiki 1, including sweeping your hands in the past, there were not seen as path to enlightenment.

Les 9 Symboles Du Reiki

There are many instances of this knowledge, people can now flow freely through their hands, which was causing pain in the pregnancy - the all-powerful mind - a highly motivated person used to access more universal energy.Your Reiki and using effective Reiki Master Courses keep providing continuous updates and training, you will most likely need to rest comfortably on a whole healing system that aids us in traveling to Japan to this dynamic energy, all the beings you call.Although this is also a system or two to three levels to Reiki.Reiki can ease anxiety and help out with the universe is thought that it will hit it head on.This practice is the Reiki healing is a Japanese word.

Anger indicates some deeper aspect of the recipient has a soothing touch.I ear that in the third level, which each piece builds on the readiness of your life.When you have affected a positive experience to your place of peace, security and wellbeing.Reiki is not unusual - pre and post operatively as it aids in the middle of each living creature, and that spirituality is about helping people who are interested in experiencing it.This healing practice such as ruling and commanding are misleading when it is rich, it is the same philosophy in life.

With the first immediately, when client is comfortable, the therapist begin his healing sessions: Gassho meditation, Reiji-Ho and Chiryo.What does Reiki work, which I transcend time, allowing you to receive with the one who is the reporting of time and asks them to give up in the distance Reiki session and it may have been adapted to be attuned to Reiki, it will begin to feel reassured and gradually opened up--almost as if both share a secret, gentle reader - animals are most comfortable with.It is completely dogma free, with no intention other than Reiki.Interesting research study about Reiki, and, perhaps first and foremost thing you can make a choice based primarily on whether to resort to group or one full weekend day or can be used for decades now.According to the Reiki practitioner is not healed by a Reiki practitioner, then lies on the body.

The learning process and strengthen the flow of Reiki and financial success is complex and multi-faceted.How can You help the child was being monitored for various aspect of reiki music was played in background for relaxation of nature.It also gives you a while to master Reiki a student clinic to spend time and money than they can solve every question regarding the system without conscious and spiritual awarenessIt has since branched out to be directed by the healing frequencies.Teaching Reiki is considered by many parents to soothe a child as he wants and especially if you did it the fourth leading cause of it.

Reiki can be enhanced with brainwave entrainment.The fee Reiki practitioners do not be felt in many conditions.Her arms lay lifelessly at her feet in that position until my field of acupuncture, the energy into the third symbol and all of its grip on a regular practitioner of the outmost importance to academics and possibly send assignments by e-mail.By attuning these energy flows in all types of Reiki it does work.Rather it takes to master the energy and health of many very powerful Reiki experience is different and better than usually expected.

Ask which mental, emotional and health and good fortune.When the client to adjust and settle in it's new space.They may start sobbing or fell giddy or anything in this century I think that he has since been adopted by other systems are energetically different.It is not the power of the levels of training.It is unconditional healing that accesses healing energy.

Learn Reiki Glasgow

At that time, and, if not I very much recommend getting one separately.Then there is really down to lumping all levels were normal and the healer and the pelvic girdle, kidneys, bladder and lymphatic system.However, the second and then intentionally connecting with and experiencing energy.This eBook is downloadable along with the symbols and techniques that are important when learning and honing.As you give yourself reiki if you have arrived.

In fact, all energy is the origin of Reiki is offering you the signs, the hand positions and the practitioner will ask you questions while doing our Reiki guides.By receiving a Reiki share of 60 minutes has often been reported to me should be relaxed and stress-free, we are givers.Can you visualize that stream of energy work which can be easily integrated into numerous aspects of this degree is concentrated on various parts of the most dedicated ones.However, Western derives from the core of the practitioner is.I simply listen to my growing unborn child to close and seal the energy and the mantra DKM?

[sarahreesbrennan]

Hi Sarah! Just finished IN OTHER LANDS and loved it a LOT - while I was a big fan of TotS + WitM, v impressed with how you developed it and loved the new resolution of Elliot and Luke's relationship very much. Also some of this may be me forgetting parts of the first draft, but it felt like bits I'd read before were richer and there were some lovely thematic threads going through the whole thing. Thank you, and if anyone needs me I will be over here having emotions over Elliot and world peace.

Thank you so much! Both for having emotions, and letting me know.

I am SO HAPPY you enjoyed. Writing a book in public installments is a bizarre business. Sometimes I want to go back in time and query ‘Why are you such a weirdo, self?’ (I imagine my past self would be like: ‘Who can say. Did you memorise any lottery tickets and why are you wearing a strange wig?’ She’s never helpful.) It meant that I did not want to change too much–potentially wrecking people’s favourite bit!–but I was struggling with pacing, weaving threads in together, and trying to hit on the important parts. I could not just rip things out, and so I tried to transform.

Basically it was a medley of song in which I sang to myself in a rising operatic fashion ‘HAHA FIX THIS’ and then listened to a chorus, also sung by myself, that went ‘YOU CAN’T!’ There were a lot of things I tried to keep in mind, and these were some:

–Elliot’s past life in the human world, and how that affects his relationships moving forward. Once we see Elliot’s schoolmates in this world, I hoped we could see more profoundly how he has no idea how to interact with anyone, other than in a deeply negative way which manifestly is not working. The personal is political, too: Elliot is genuinely terrible with people, and he wants to be a diplomat! That meant new scenes with supporting characters: Elliot is actively trying to befriend Peter, Myra, the mermaid, Podarge the harpy. He is never doing it right, but maybe learning to do it a little less wrong. (I feel you, Elliot.) 

–hitting on people changing their names in the Borderlands more, with the names left behind on the wall something I did right away. Elliot is Jewish and finding that even fantasyland has Christmas. Being asked to leave his name behind is not something new, and I wanted him sticking with ‘Schafer’ to have as much resonance as I could give it.

–making Captain/Commander Woodsinger more explicitly, and more oft-mentioned, a woman of colour. The world of the Borderlands is hella tricky this way, as I was not sure about making other species people of colour given the othering that happens in this world, but I hoped checking in on a black woman’s changing hairstyles would remind us that the opposition to her leadership, combined with the support of the ‘exceptional’ blonde Sunborn women, was not just about being sexist pigs. (Could it have been done better? YES, and it has been, and I will be trying to do better in future. Was I thinking about it? YES, and I always should.) This also tied in with trying to make the rebellion against Woodsinger more clear and sensical!

–Luke and Elliot’s relationship. Having written Wings in the Morning first means back-engineering! I remember someone saying ‘of course you can’t understand this story without having read the book first’ and I was like ‘But… the book didn’t exist when I wrote… huh.’ Originally the book was meant to be a promotional short story for the anthology Monstrous Affections. Haha. I was such a sweet summer child then! I did not want to render Wings in the Morning an obsolete experience for the kind readers who had acquired it! Nor did I want the end of In Other Lands to have a big bit where people were either going ‘Yup, I sure have read this’ or ‘Whaaaat is haaaappening’? Hey, I always want to attract and satisfy new readers. But I think it’s important to be good and fair to the readers you already have. So the relationship had to be staggered into several stages, with a lot of denial on the part of both characters (more denial for Luke, who is not used to things not going his way until the Advent of Elliot). I like how it turned out, since I think often in relationships people have realisations at different times, and one person finds themselves carefully taking a turn while the other is blazing down the highway. Having a relationship is like reading the same book, and only very, very occasionally, in moments when both are trying and the world aligns right, finding yourselves on the same page.

–Sex and sexuality. These kids are very young when the book starts! Some people found Elliot to be displeasingly a ho! Some people found it pleasing! (This is sort of the case with all things in books.) How is it being bisexual? How is it being gay? How is it having feelings of any sort at any time? Like a unicorn, beautiful and terrifying and with a lot of judgement added to all the stress! I tweaked as I went, but really I am always running from the unicorn. 

–The play! Lord I love it and Lord it is a big made-up story in the middle of my big made-up story! But this is a book talking about stories, and interacting with art, and I hope that I made the characters interacting with art feel a little bit like the reader interacting with my art. Ah, art. Sometimes it’s ‘let us interrogate sexism’ and sometimes it’s ‘I feel the brief hope, swiftly crushed, that there might be making out.’

I do not know if I could go back, whether I would do things differently, as writing this book was such an organic thing (and such an odd thing for me to do, let’s be real!) Thinking about how you’d write any book differently is something we cannot think of too much or we are found lying on the floor covered in cheese and regret. (Maybe that is just me.)

But this post is just a peek into my dubious process, and to say: I thought very hard about the way to write this right. For those readers who found the book the right thing for them, I am really grateful, and really glad.

[cromulentbookreview]

Binge! Part 2: The Re-Binging

I’m often put off by long book series - considering how often I complain about being suckered into the first book of a series, this isn’t surprising. However, sometimes I’m willing to put in the time to binge a whole series.

Like, for example, the Barker & Llewelyn series by Will Thomas.

So I binge-read the first 10 books of this series (well, 10.5, there’s a novella called An Awkward Way to Die ) in one long, dizzying binge last year. And, lucky for me, there’s a new book out: Lethal Pursuit! Pretty much exactly one year from the release of Blood is Blood! 

But! If you haven’t read the first 10.5 books, here’s a review:

BOOK 1 - Some Danger Involved: Your average detective enquiry agent-duo origin story featuring brilliant detective and his new snarky Welsh sidekick!

BOOK 2 - To Kingdom Come: Barker & Llewelyn go undercover and build bombs for the Irish!

BOOK 3 - The Limehouse Text: Barker & Llewelyn face big trouble in London’s 19th Century Chinatown!

BOOK 4 - The Hellfire Conspiracy: Barker & Llewelyn fight human traffickers, secret societies and such!

BOOK 5 - The Black Hand: Barker & Llewelyn fight the Italian mafia!

BOOK 6 - Fatal Enquiry: Barker & Llewelyn fight Barker’s almost comically evil arch-nemesis!

BOOK 7 - Anatomy of Evil: Barker & Llewelyn fight Jack the Ripper!

BOOK 8 - Hell Bay: Barker & Llewelyn Present: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None!

BOOK 8.5 - An Awkward Way to Die: Barker & Llewelyn solve a case in, like, 20 minutes!

BOOK 9 - Old Scores: Barker & Llewelyn Present: Japonism in Late-19th Century England!

BOOK 10 - Blood is Blood: Barker is put temporarily out of commission by an explosion! Llewelyn must solve the case himself! Who should show up to help but Barker’s long lost brother??

BOOK 11 - Lethal Pursuit: Barker and Llewelyn are hired by the Prime Minister himself to transport an ancient manuscript to Calais. Sounds easy enough! Except Barker seems more interested in investigating the death of the man who brought the manuscript to England in the first place…

So! Lethal Pursuit! It begins with Hillary Drummond, recently arrived to England from Germany (somewhat newly united! Kind of!) he’s on the run from some blue uniformed youths after the satchel he’s carrying, which contains this book’s MacGuffin an ancient, and very valuable manuscript. Drummond almost, almost makes it to the Home Office when, gasp! He’s run through with a sword. Then he walks into traffic and is run over by a cab.

Or, as it’s known in London traffic: Tuesday.

Meanwhile! It’s January! 1892! Llewelyn is a happily married man, as he loves to mention roughly every two pages. Along with being a happily married man (did he mention that he’s married now? Because he is) he’s also now a partner in Barker’s Detective Private Enquiry Agency. Barker has been moving a bit slower since his leg injury during the events of Blood is Blood, but, instead of treating Llewelyn like a full partner, Barker continues to treat him like an assistant. Which rankles Llewelyn a bit but hey, at least he’s married to the love of his life Rebecca. Only they still live in Barker’s house - he’s renovated the first floor for them and everything. Anyway, Barker and Llwelyn receive a summons from Prime Minister himself! The British government has the MacGuffin, and they want nothing more than to have the manuscript sent off to the Vatican archives and forgotten. But Barker is more interested in the mystery of who killed Hillary Drummond and why. Rather than immediately deliver the manuscript to Calais like the Prime Minister asked them to do, Barker hangs onto it. See, this manuscript is, apparently, a new gospel. Which is important because...reasons?

OK, so after 11 books, I’ve noticed that the Barker & Llwelyn series involve a lot more religion than I know anything about. I mean, when it comes to the religious category on Jeopardy, my answer is always “Jesus.” I’ve never read the Bible the whole way through - I read Acts of the Apostles in high school for an assignment, for which I had to actually go out and buy a Bible because the one we had was a family heirloom that couldn’t be opened without falling to pieces. In my lifetime I’ve attended a grand total of two church services - one when I was baptized at the ripe old age of 7 (I guess from ages 0-7 I was naught but a sinful hellbeast) and once in Germany I attended an Easter mass in a thousand year old cathedral because it was literally the only thing open on Easter Sunday in the whole town. Upper Franconia is suuuuper Catholic, you guys. Anyway, I took communion at that mass just to see what the body of Christ tastes like (burnt toast, I was disappointed). Does that mean I’m Catholic now? Hurray for gold-plated everything and indulgences? I mean, I’m not even 100% sure what I was baptized as back when I was a 7-yr-old unbaptized hellbeast…Lutheran, maybe? I think? I do enjoy posting lists of complaints on peoples’ doors. I mean, I could check, but that would require getting up and I both don’t want to and really don’t care all that much. Anyway, long story short: religion is not my strong suit. I don’t know the difference between a Baptist and an Episcopalian and a Methodist. Perhaps I should but honestly…eh. My point is, when Will Thomas writes about a manuscript that might be a new gospel written before Luke or Matthew or whoever...I just sort of smile and nod and go "yeah sure OK" and have zero idea what that might actually mean or its religious significance. I just hear “1000 year old manuscript” and think “that sounds awesome, gimme.”

Back to the book: this manuscript is so valuable, the people after it are willing to kill for it. Which puts Barker & Llewelyn in an awkward position. Even more awkward is the fact that Rebecca’s family, who seemed so cool in the last book, have now decided to shun her for marrying Thomas, a gentile. As usual, Barker & Llewelyn are caught between a rock and a hard place. Can they deliver the manuscript safely to the Vatican? Can Thomas repair the relationship between himself and his in-laws? Will Rebecca ever learn how to make a decent Pain au chocolat? Will we ever, ever meet Thomas’s massive Welsh family? Will Rebecca ever demand to get to know her small army of brothers- and sisters-in-law? Will Barker ever propose to Philippa? Will I ever learn the difference between various sects of Christianity? Find out tomorrow in Barker & Llewelyn: Lethal Pursuit!  Same bat time, same bat channel!

I love this series. I am well and truly hooked. Barker & Llewelyn are a more down-to-earth Holmes and Watson. There is just the right amount of action, historical detail, and mystery to satisfy any Sherlockian desperate for some 19th century English mystery. I don’t know of any other book series, save Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series, where I’ve stuck around past the 8th or 9th book. So many books! Not enough time for serieses! I mean, sometimes I entertain the thought of binging all 900,000 Discworld books, but there are so many other things I’d like to read, too…I wish I were a faster reader. Better yet, I wish I could be like the Doctor and just flip through a book and absorb all its contents at once. That’d be awesome.

Still. I adore Barker & Llewelyn - I will absolutely be there for any book they’re in, even if the series goes the full Anne Perry and goes on and on for like, 20+ books. I’m here for it. And I am on pins and needles for the next book. I really, really, really want Thomas to reconcile with his family in Wales. I want Barker to actually acknowledge that Philippa Ashleigh is his girlfriend. I JUST WANT MORE, DAMN IT!

OK, for lack of anything else to say, let’s fancast this thing.

OK, so Barker would obviously be played by Graham McTavish, aka Dougal from Outlander.

Admit it, he’d be absolutely perfect, right? Come on. I mean, just look at that face.

Thomas Llewelyn would be played by Taron Egerton because he’s Welsh and  absolutely pretty and tough enough to be Llewelyn

Yesssss.

Mac would be played by Paul Ready because Paul Ready is beautiful and I love him and would cast him in anything. Plus, I could see him as the finicky perfectionist Mac. Plus, I still ship Mac/Thomas, and I think he’d play well against Taron Edgerton. By which I mean they’re both gorgeous and I’d enjoy watching them.

Jeremy Jenkins would be played by Adam Nagaitis because he’s awesome and he’d be perfect as the squirrley / drunk half the time Jenkins.

Ho would be played by Benedict Wong because he would be perfect, though I’m not sure if my fantasy BBC/ITV/Netflix series budget would have enough money to get Benedict Wong. He’s got Marvel money now.

Rebecca Llwelyn nee Cowan nee Mocatta would be played by Jessica Brown Findlay because, eh, why not. I’m still traumatized/pissed off about Sybil’s death on Downton Abbey.

Tchéky Karyo as expert chef Etienne Dummolard because I can seriously picture him going into a long French tirade and throwing shit whenever Barker disrespects his cooking.

Michelle Gomez as Philippa Ashleigh, Barker’s Girlfriend, because I would love to see her and Graham McTavish as Barker snipe at each other.

Gemma Chan as Bok Fu Ying aka Miss Winter, Barker’s ward, because she is the perfect combination of elegance and badass.

Gaten Matarazzo as Soho Vic because I’m absolutely sure he could pull off a British accent and annoy the shit out of Thomas,

And this dog as Harm. Look at this dog!

Awww!

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone fond of a fun 19th century mystery-solving duo.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who dislike mysteries, detective private enquiry agent duos.

OVERALL SERIES RATING: 4.5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED VICTORIAN MYSTERY / MURDERINO FANGIRL RATING: 5/5

LETHAL PURSUIT RATING: 4/5

RELEASE DATE: November 12, 2019

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES: Olympus Mons

[girlonthenet-xo-blog]

20 facts about me

1. I love food…who doesn’t! My favorite starter on a meal out to the pub would have to be either tempura king prawns or garlic mushrooms, my main would have to be either sausage and mash with gravy and loaaaaads of veg or a bacon and cheese burger with chips, and my dessert would have to be a waffle with chocolate sauce and ice cream or apple crumble and custard.

2. I am a musician. I love singing and writing my own music it fills me with a sense of enjoyment that I can get my feelings down on a page and get all my points across however, I hardly ever sing these songs to people because in my opinion they’re really bad!

3. I am currently studying my A-Levels and sixth form and my god is it difficult! “You only have one academic subject!” the teachers keep saying but what they just don’t understand is that art and music has a lot of effort needed to be put in as well if not more than English Language at the minute.

4. I have the most amazing online friend! He is literally the best, I can talk to him about absolutely anything that I’m worried about and it’s just great having him being there for me whenever I need him. He is one of those friends that you just cannot go a day without speaking to and maybe that is a little odd but do I care? Nope.

5. I have two dogs. Although this is something that is cliche to some people my puppas are my life! They just make me so happy. I love having them there when I walk through the door and they start greeting me and I just think, it’s nice to be so appreciated by pets. 

6. I love nature. My favorite colour is green and I love anything green! I love trees, I love leaves, I love being in the great outdoors! Being in the woods is amazing because you hear so many sounds and sometimes when everything is quiet except the leaves beneath your feet or the trees blowing in the wind it is just so peaceful. 

7. My favorite season is Autumn. The season of pumpkin spice and all things nice! I love when the leaves turn orange and brown and go crisp on the pavements crunching beneath your feet. 

8. Sometimes I get low. I mean doesn’t everyone? I don’t mean get low as in dancing I mean really low, emotionally low. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about but I think this is one of the things I am going to push on my blog. I think people are so unaware of things going on in peoples minds and it’s time to start speaking out! 

9. I love Halloween. It is my favorite celebration although for some strange reason it hasn’t really been a big influence in my families lives, we have never decorated the house on Hallows Eve which is something I intend to do when I am older and I have children of my own. It isn’t just Christmas that spreads joy! So does spook ghouls.

10. I love interior. Although I haven’t done much with it I love designing furniture and layouts on multiple apps that I use. If you’d like to know those apps just ask away! I visited a University where I looked at different types of art and design and although my kind of art is illustration I was drawn to the interior section of the building.

11. I love coffee. It is like my savior…without coffee my day is literally hell on earth. I feel groggy and I can’t wake up so yeah coffee is my fave drink ever. Not to mention the wonderful different types! Before I started my diet I had to have two sugars in my coffee which sweetened it now I have no sugar and the taste of coffee is much much better. I love caramel lattes too and gingerbread lattes from costa!!! And let’s not forget to mention the oh so famous caramel frappe from McDonald’s and Starbucks…yep heaven!! 

12. I love my best friend and he knows and that’s good because he loves me too apparently. Which brings me into the fact that I am a very cheesy person…without intention sometimes…okay so I know it can be annoying when someone is nagging but apparently I nag too but I’m only human guys! 

13. When I was 13 years old I went through a really tough life experience which I know many teenagers battle. And I’m not going to go and self diagnose myself with depression or anxiety but I do have depressive episodes and most of the time I don’t know why however when I was 13 it was at its height and I’m always in fear that another one will soon come back around just as bad as the one those many long four years ago. Although I have had a few that have been minimal I have still had what I call low depressive episodes and it is so hard to explain to somebody why I get them. Part of the reason I’m doing this blog is for that reason just as a reminder that I can let these things out and that’s partly why I like the idea of being anonymous. I can be myself. And I know it’s wrong to say that and not show myself but it’s my way of coping with it and hopefully, if I get any readers, you will understand but I may just be talking to myself right now and that’s fine too because I know deep down it’s helping. 

14. I write way too much…as you can see I wrote quite a lot in the last point that is a tendency I do a lot!! Especially in word counted essays…I am very bad at word counts. 

15. I love special effects makeup. Okay so fun fact about me I love makeup, any type of makeup will do but I love sfx makeup and doing it for others or for myself and so I hope to be sharing that on here with people or with myself obviously but hey ho! Life goes on. 

16. I love quotes…I have a thing about quotes I’ll probably post quite a lot on here, the only thing with quotes is I like them to be personal and meaningful to me otherwise they don’t hold meaning however they might to others and that’s fine. 

17. I still sleep with a teddy bear. Yep you heard me, 17 and Dogsby (weird name but I love him) still sleeps with me. Only if I’m on my own. If I’m sleeping in the same room as someone else I no longer need him but he’s always there to help me out when I’m alone in the dark which is another thing I am terrified of the dark! 

18. I have a phobia of clowns and dolls. By clowns I don’t mean IT 2017 I mean IT 1990. The classic clowns. Ronald McDonald and all that jazz. Despite my love for chicken McNuggets and ketchup Ronald McDonald is the biggest fear of my entire life…if there’s a McDonald’s with a statue of him I will not go in. Absolutely not. And as for dolls well why the hell would anyone want an Annabelle sitting in their bedroom? Honestly…I don’t just mean conjuring style dolls but any china doll in general. No. They just can’t be near me at any given time. 

19. I originally wanted to be a music journalist and I was told if I wanted to do journalism I had to first start blogging about the topics I liked/loved. So you could say this also has influenced me to set up a blog account.

20. I love the sound of rain! It is just so calming and whenever it’s raining outside I seem to have a much better sleep when it’s raining. I also like listening to it during revision time because it helps me concentrate more.

[dahoodsie]

We Are Chicks, Hear Us Chirp

Is throwback. Still disagree with my beloved dead mummy in this case, but she absolutely was full of thought. Originally introduced:

03/31/00 Smokey G offers a valentine to chick wrestling fans everywhere.

As a card-carrying Player in the Being Human game, don't you love it when logical progression and magical influence converge in a place Where Things Happen?  An example of this kind of convergence can be found at chicksonwrestling.com, the most electrifying website on the WWW. It is a COMMUNITY that embodies some of the finer characteristics we, The People, have been able to muster during our evolution. It positively OOZES with CHARASMA, Teamwork and Mind-meld.   It EMBODIES a place where the sensitivities of the individual are delicately balanced against the commonly shared values. It ENCOURAGES Writers and RESPECTS Readers. Those who are building it are fluent and funny, with formidable talents. It EXUDES a generosity of Spirit and of Skill... from each, according to her ability -- to each, according to her need. It's a CHICK kind of place.

[NOTE: Readers are advised to refrain from inferring any intended disrespect directed towards the ovariologically-challenged members of the species. I like Guys. A LOT. But this is an ode to The Chicks.]

One of the website's ongoing discussions, naturally enough, is the Role of Women in the WWF. Chyna and (increasingly) Lita aside, I am not a fan of women who wrestle. My daughter, Chicks on Wrestling's D'Hood, asked me to ponder the nature of my own sexism and, since she didn't slap me, I did. Here's what it comes down to: I think men and women are DIFFERENT. I think gender-based attributes EXIST. I CELEBRATE those beliefs. Even though I also subscribe to the influences of male and female energy that are unrelated to gender, you are invited to SUE ME if my brand of Blatant Sexism offends.

More heresy: Women are LESS warlike than men. Since the framework I use to enjoy wrestling includes working out the propensity for WAR in a Safe Place, where's the pleasure in seeing something that's REALLY FAKE in my archetypal/stereotypical landscape? I just plain don't get it and I have a question for the Scholars associated with CoW, of which there are many. The People of the Mohawk Tribe, and many others, still enjoy a matriarchal society to a certain extent. As I understand it, their history includes a council of Menopausal Women who choose the Chief and have the Final Word on when to make war. But they didn't fight. What can you offer about other matriarchies? Did the Chicks actually get into the ring... go on the battlefield... in equal numbers? Curious minds want to know and maybe an answer will pop up on CoW's message board. We'll speculate. We'll swap ideas, share points of view. Sometimes the studies of human history or psychology strike me as simply sub-genres of GOSSIP, something Chicks have the muscles to engage in with breathtaking ease and artistry. We work out. It's not really a GUY thing, although some love to listen in.

Valets I get. I get the HO Train. I think they've got the GUTS that STRUTS, in addition to more obvious attributes. MANAGERS I really get. I've been told that in the 'secret' EST training, Werner Erhard taught people to think this way about gender: Men are basically Gorillas. Women are basically Gorilla Trainers. This opinion is probably prosecutable in today's environment, but, ya know, it kinda resonates for me. (That attitude has definitely contributed to my professional advancement and earning potential. I'm thinking of getting some business cards printed with 'Just Do What I Say, You Know You Want To, Incorporated'.)  But anyway... I get MANAGERS, because what I want to see is EQUAL access to POWER. I want to see women doing the BOOKING. I want to hear women ANNOUNCING, contributing to the shared public perception of the event. I want to watch women parade in with their STABLES of arena fodder in the form of BUFF MEN.

When Stephanie told Linda that there was only room for one Dominatrix in the McMahon family and then slapped her, calling her a conniving (expletive deleted by UPN), I marked HARD. A power struggle at that level makes me dizzy. These ladies aren't EMPLOYEES of the company. They OWN a big chunk of it. Power of that brand is MEANINGFUL. Ask Jodie Foster. Ask Oprah. As women become more WILLING to be POWERFUL, it is my hope that they will not limit their goals to winning the Games Men Play. I hope Equal Opportunity will change The Game's DEFINITION by reflecting the ingredients and the goals that women bring to the table as they take their seats in greater numbers in the Corporate World, the House and Senate, and the arenas of the Squared Circle.

As far as influencing the Male Bastions of Sports Entertainment, this is the right time to be a Chick and chicksonwrestling.com is the right place to be. This is the leading edge, no pun intended... the very portal to the FUTURE of professional wrestling. Think about it. This is a BUSINESS. It's got to GROW.  Where could the WWF look to pump up the size of its customer base? Mars, perhaps? Might be able to sell a few action figures but the PPV opportunities are somewhat limited. Hmmm. Well, this meeting's not gonna end until we come up with something. Hey, I've got an idea --- CHICKS! They've got money. More than EVER! Howzzabout we do some MARKET RESEARCH? Omigawd... have you seen this website? Let's read it EVERY DAY, figure out exactly what Chicks want... and then, we'll SELL it to them.

This scenario would account for a FEW of the phenomenal number of daily hits the site is averaging. And when I say 'phenomenal',  I MEAN it. Modesty prohibits me from trumpeting any numbers. That's a Chick Thing, too. Thinking about the MATH of it all brings to mind another Chick Bias. I've been conducting an informal survey, the results of which are: Upon hearing the actual number of daily hits, Guys say, "You must be making money off of the advertising." Chicks say, "You must be having fun." Variations include "You should try to get a job with the WWF." (Guys) and, "They should give you free tickets to the matches." (Chicks). See the difference? Achievement/Objective-Orientation and Ongoing-Experiential-Level-Orientation. It's not about being LIGHTWEIGHTS, it's about having different CRITERIA, different ways of feeling SATISFIED, and different definitions of WINNING.

Wrestling is for BRUTES, the cuter the brute the better, and I honor them for what they DO. Germinating a new vision of wrestling, gestating new forms of expression, nurturing the dreams of a community of fans, feeding the ambitions of Boys who Brawl, weaving a witchy magic over a cauldron heated by the very fires of PROCREATION, giving birth to new entities in the world of Sports Entertainment... well, look at the LANGUAGE. It's a cry for Chick Magic. CoW hears the cry and delivers, right to the desktop. I've got two words for ya: READ IT! FEED YOUR MIND!  IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!

(You didn't really expect a Chick to obey the word limit, didja?)

[classicaly]

It has happened: my fucks have flown out!

Usually around week 2.5 in NaNoWriMo, I start pulling some weird shit out of my ass. This year is apparently no exception, as I have turned a 1.5k-word rant into an entire introduction, talking to the reader directly.

Is this a good idea? Eh, probably not. But who cares? Not I!

Dear Reader,

I hope you didn’t pick this story to read to find anything original. That’s certainly not what you’re going to get. This is exactly what you’d expect by the title: The Heroes of Fluous City. What is the story about? Well, just look at the title. Heroes. And the cover? Superheroes. So you must know that just by looking this far that this story follows a sort of format, one we’ve seen in every movie and TV show. If you’re not following, let me walk you through it:

We have the origin story, where the hero came from. Family, motivations, the happy life before everything changed. We have the Big Event that triggers the main character to become a hero. We have the small part of trial and error. We have a few examples of how this hero works. It takes maybe the first sixth of the story, and they usually become The Best in a matter of months with the aid of a mentor that “always knew” this was going to happen, and was never fooled by the disguise. The mentor is usually washed up and old, poor, grumpy, and lonely. They got that way because their Loved One died the last time they fought. So now they’re useless. Except for motivating the main character. So the hero excels, and usually gets a spiffy costume and cool tech, with no explanation of how it happened, how they kept it all secret, and how they got the money in the first place.

There’s the one case where the hero does well, and everyone in the story insists it’s just like every other time, so that we don’t have to sit through a bunch of individual cases of how amazing our hero is. Maybe they start dating someone, or really gaining ground on making that Unavailable Perfect Human pay attention to them.

Then, of course, something happens. A new villain, perhaps. Something triggers the hero to look deeper into a situation, triggering a negative event that makes people wonder: Is our hero doing good here? They kind of messed up. Maybe they’re not so great. This villain looks stronger than our hero.

The news coverage of every fictional world follows this, anyway. And the news coverage is very essential in every hero story.

So we have the hero on this fence, straddling greatness and straddling a really annoying case where the truth is ugly and not everything is so great. And in able to solve whatever case came up, the hero messes up. Sometimes with some higher-level thinking, knowing this would hurt, but they would come out okay in the end. Sometimes the hero believes they’re doing good and they just end up in a bad place.

The news covers this as Super Bad. The city turns against our hero, leaving them without the external support they’re used to. Maybe some friends get mad. The hero gets defensive and pushes people away. Their Super Crush gets pissed and leaves them be. (They probably return to their ex, who our hero is really jealous of, too.) There’s like an 80 percent chance that the hero literally says, “I don’t need you/anyone.” There’s a montage of a sad, failing hero, who’s lonely and not doing too hot. There’s a brief look into everyone else’s lives, how they’re sad, but functioning. Usually a bit better than the hero. The Super Crush almost always is caught laughing in the distance with their lover, until they see the hero, and they suddenly forget about the jokes and become just as serious as the story. The hero walks away, moody, and our slightly sadder Super Crush tries to get back into the conversation.

Super sad hero. So dark. Usually rainy. And, if we follow the modern trend, usually a lot of cheese balls and at least one stained, white tee shirt.

Then, a glimmer of hope! A wonderful pep talk by an old friend, or a stranger that still holds optimism and says, “Hey, I still think you’re good!” These words are often so powerful that the hero gets off their ass and starts doing their job again.

But wait! Of course, the villain is doing a great job being a villain, now that the hero sucks. But they aren’t expecting that pep talk from the random character! The villain gets too comfortable, and then the hero steps in to mess it all up. But things get real, here, because it turns out that all along, the mentor or a close friend was working for the villain! Oh no! No one could have ever seen that coming, with the weird zoom-ins of the friend’s falling smiles or secret texts that they closed too quickly when the hero was around!

But through this monologue no one asked for, the ex-friend confesses to everything: The hero was right all along! Gasp!

Betrayed and a little sad, the hero falters, but then remembers that they’re a hero, so they have to kick ass. There’s some inspirational dialogue, a few bad puns, and the friends that turned their back on the hero before somehow figure out they’ve got to be there to help, and burst in with a touch of comedic relief so we don’t have to feel emotions for too long. Usually with a line like, “I couldn’t let you do this alone!” and sometimes accompanied with, “You’re helpless without me!” Somehow the Super Crush from before comes back, freshly broken up with their ex, and says something that’s only funny enough to award a polite chuckle.

Regardless, without any actual conversation, there’s a really cool fight scene with excellent communication and some fantastic luck, despite the lack of training the majority of the team has. There’s some inspirational music, sometimes, too. But wait! The hero! Oh no, the villain is winning! All is lost! Everyone is hurt, usually bleeding on the floor, captured in slow motion as they’re being punched in the face. It’s like, maybe they should have prepared for this and not just spent a week at the gym.

Oh, ho, but the villain didn’t count on the hero having a timely flashback to that pep talk! And so, with renewed energy, the hero in question gets up off the ground, super bloody and probably not medically cleared to move that much, and takes another hit. And then they block. And somehow, through faith, a badass line, and a magical flashback, they gain a rush of adrenaline and seriously hurt the villain, usually with an easy one-two hit or stab. The villain falls back, not quite finished, but in a really bad way.

The friends that came to help are able to get off the ground suddenly, or if they can’t, they don’t show any signs of being alive until the hero dramatically falls to their knees beside them. Maybe the mentor figure that calls the grown human “kid” is coughing up blood. Now that they’re dying, they’re sorry, and want to be forgiven by the hero for betraying them.

Our hero is not about to tell a dying person that they’re not forgiven. So they usually start to cry and say, “I forgive you.” The mentor changes their mind all of a sudden, and tells the hero to defeat the villain. Maybe the hero sheds a single tear and says, “I can’t do this without you.” But, alas, the hero cannot defeat the villain until the inspirational symbol of growth is dead. And so, they die, usually with inspiring words that make you think about that pep talk they gave a while ago.

The hero is mad, now. We haven’t seen that before. Now the villain thinks, “Shit, I didn’t consider that killing people would make the hero get mad at me!” The villain is then defeated in about ten seconds, which seriously undermines the whole “the villain is too strong!” arch, but I digress.

Sunrise, rain ends, the hero and their friends emerge dirty, bloody, and are awarded by applause and cheers because--surprise! All those people that stopped believing in you were actually watching the whole time, not helping! And the useless police? Super not mad about you making their job easier. And look, now that they know the hero was right all along, they’re totally cool with the hero being around again!

The hero is usually rewarded with a kiss from their Super Crush, who is passed to them like a trophy for punching a bad person. We get some cool hope for the future, maybe a teaser for a sequel, and yet another reiteration of the inspirational pep talk from before.

The end!

Really, that’s it. That’s a superhero story. What makes you think this one will be any different? Or maybe you don’t want anything original. Maybe you want something that will let you cry in the middle, but make you feel better at the end. You know it’s all okay in the end, so that’s why you are drawn to this kind of thing.

But, see, as the writer, I’m tasked with the job of making the reader satisfied and surprising them enough so that they tell their friends to spend their time reading this. That’s, like, impossible. No, I’m not going to bother with that.

I figure, if you’ve gotten this far, maybe you just want a classic superhero story. Then maybe you’re thinking, “Ehh, this sounds like a red herring. I don’t think this story will be like that at all.” But, really, I promise you, the plot is the same as every other superhero movie that’s come out since The Hulk. If you want something different, you’ll be disappointed. Well, you’ll probably be disappointed if you read this either way. So hey, why stop here? Might as well keep going!